Few features have been as big of a sensation among our customers as the floating player, a configuration option released in 8.8.0. Ad viewability rates and view engagement increase when the player remains in view as a viewer scrolls, and can be enabled with the click of a button in the player builder in our dashboard or configured with a single line with JSON in the setup block.

Over the past year, you’ve shared ideas for other floating experiences including: when the page first loads, when the viewer reaches a certain point in an article, or on interaction (i.e.with a button). So, we’ve taken that feedback to create a new API to start and stop floating on command in 8.17.0.

Service update with some fixes and a new partner_rss feed output format!

Updates

Media Delivery

• Added partner_rss output format that aligns with the MRSS specifications of content syndicators, e.g. MSN and Verizon Media. Use this format to ingest content into syndication partner platforms. This format is not optimized for playback. For JW hosted content, only the highest quality MP4 rendition is sent for ingestion. More information on output formats can be found here.

Fixes

Video Management Dashboard

• Fixed an issue where IAB categories were not being copied as expected.
• Fixed an issue that resulted in seeing an improper warning when leaving live channel detail page
• Fixed an issue where user could delete an Ad Schedule before explicitly creating one
• Fixed issue that caused the “Load More” Button to not display correctly on Live Channels Download/Clipping Slideouts

We've resolved the common pain point of wanting to load a fixed playlist and start playback from any item within it, not just the first one. Our new configuration option facilitates that out of the box. You can use this to resume a series from a viewer's next unwatched episode, or to feature certain videos instead of others. Happy playlisting!

Stay up to date with the latest Google IMA library in our Android 3.16.0 release.